To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (10 page)

Sometimes his passion for revenge frightened her.
It’s probably just as well,
she thought,
that Captain Kirk and the others are all light-years away by now
. She never wanted to come between Khan and his wrath.

“Sounds good,” Parvati said, assenting to Marla’s wishes, so Marla set off through the fields toward camp. It was at least forty-five degrees Celsius, and the combined heat and humidity sapped her strength, leaving her drenched in perspiration. As far as she was concerned, the monsoon couldn’t come too soon, and not just because they needed the rain for their crops. She was tired of being hot and dirty and dusty all the time. What she wouldn’t give for a decent sonic shower…!

No more of that,
she scolded herself. Self-pity was a luxury she was doing her best to overcome, along with the gnawing ache in her stomach.
Maybe I should have grabbed a few of those grubs to munch on
. To her slight dismay, the squiggly worms were sounding better and better.

The gates of New Chandigarh soon came into view, and she took a moment to admire the progress the colony had
made since their arrival on the planet. Barbed wire and a high metal fence, cannibalized from construction materials found in the cargo bays, had replaced the wall of thorns, although four of the now-empty cargo carriers still served as watchtowers. Crude doorways, carved out by a red-hot phaser beam, provided entrance to the converted metal shells.

A crimson banner, bearing the image of a crescent moon superimposed upon a sun, fluttered from flagpole rising from the center of the camp. The flag had been designed by Khan himself, Marla knew, during his reign on Earth three hundred years ago. Together, the sun and the moon symbolized totality—everything in the world, all that Khan had once intended to rule.

Just as he now intended to rule Ceti Alpha V.

Meanwhile, the original tents had given way to roughly fifteen one-story huts, of a primitive “wattle-and-daub” variety.
Not unlike the early structures at the first Botany Bay colony in Australia,
she reflected. Horizontal lengths of saplings, harvested from a grove of palm trees they’d discovered farther down the river, had been stretched between four sturdy timber posts, creating walls that resembled antique washboards. Thatched roofs covered the tops of the newly built huts, while canvas from the discarded tents provided an additional level of insulation for the ceilings.

Back in the eighteenth century, Marla knew, such crude structures had been plastered on the outside with mud, but Khan had shrewdly realized that sunbaked mud would be unlikely to survive the coming monsoon. As a result, the walls of the huts had been lightly daubed with fast-setting thermoconcrete, of the sort used to construct emergency shelters by Starfleet landing parties. Marla took pride in
having suggested the idea to Khan in the first place; ironically, despite a lifetime devoted to the study of the past, she now found herself the colony’s resident expert on “future” technology and materials.

Not that my fellow colonists appreciate my efforts,
Marla thought, the buried resentment surfacing against her will.
At least not most of them
.

She pushed the painful knowledge aside with effort, returning her attention to the growing settlement. Someday, she hoped, there would be time to manufacture actual bricks from the clay by the river, and stone tiles to replace the thatched roofs. She envisioned graceful brick buildings rising from the camp’s humble beginnings, adorned perhaps with polished marble, or rare woods imported from the great deciduous forests to the south, to make New Chandigarh a city worthy of Khan’s ambitious dreams of empire.

But for now, of course, hunting and farming took priority.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, somewhere to the southwest. Marla sniffed the breeze. Was it just her imagination or was there a wisp of ozone in the air?
Another electrical storm on the way,
she surmised. Another sign, along with the mounting humidity, that the rainy season should be arriving any day now.

Bring it on,
she thought eagerly.
Anything to cool things off a bit!

Trudging wearily through the feverish heat and dust, she walked through the front gate of the colony. No friendly faces or salutations greeted her return to the camp—only a few sullen and/or disinterested glances from men and women who quickly went back to their respective chores, turning their backs on Marla.

She was used to the cold-shoulder treatment by now, but it still hurt. Her standing in the colony remained a work-in-progress that, unlike New Chandigarh itself, was going nowhere fast. At Khan’s insistence, the others tolerated her presence, some more grudgingly than others, but Marla knew that she was still regarded as an outsider and an inferior. For a moment, she regretted leaving Parvati Rao behind in the fields; thanks to Marla’s lifesaving medical assistance during that first sabertooth-hunting expedition, the Indian guardswoman was about the only human on the planet, aside from Khan himself, who actually treated Marla like a friend.

Marla crossed the campsite in lonely silence. Her Starfleet medallion dangled from a chain around her throat, and she guiltily tucked it into the neck of her sweat-stained blouse, safely out of sight. She wasn’t ashamed of her past—on the contrary, she remained proud to have served, however briefly, in Starfleet—but, for Khan’s sake, she thought it wise not to flaunt her divided loyalties in the face of the other colonists. Why mark herself with a scarlet letter, as if she wasn’t already enough of a pariah?

“Well, well,” a mocking voice called out, “if it isn’t Khan’s pretty little pet!”

Marla recognized the voice and her heart sank.
Great,
she thought.
Just what I
didn’t
need right now
.

She turned to see Zuleika Walker tending a large pot of boiling water, not unlike a witch brewing her cauldron—if your typical witch looked like a towering dark-skinned Amazon, that is. Weeks of strict rations had stripped every ounce of excess body fat from the woman’s body, making her formidable musculature all the more imposing. As
usual, she wore only a revealing shroud of golden mesh, as a concession either to the heat, her vanity, or both.

“What do you want, Zuleika?” Marla asked apprehensively. Although the hostile superwoman had not threatened Marla physically since their first night on the planet, she seldom missed an opportunity to give Marla a bad time, if only when Khan was not around. After the incident with the torch, Marla couldn’t help feeling uneasy at the sight of Zuleika in close proximity to another fire.

“Want?” the other woman replied. Her dark eyes flashed indignantly. “I want to be somewhere civilized, with indoor plumbing and air-conditioning, not playing
Gilligan’s Island
on Ceti Alpha V, wherever the hell that is, but I guess that’s just not going to happen, is it, Mary-Ann?” She spat at the dusty ground between them. “I was a supermodel-slash-assassin back on Earth. Now look at me!”

Marla didn’t quite get all of the woman’s archaic references, but the message—and the attitude—was clear enough.
Fine,
Marla thought angrily. She was tired of taking the blame for all the rigors of frontier life. What did Zuleika expect when she signed aboard the
Botany Bay
, a pleasure cruise to Risa? “I don’t have time for this,” she responded.

She made sure Zuleika got a good look at the Colt automatic pistol (which would have been the envy of Lieutenant Sulu back on the
Enterprise
) tucked into the wide black belt around her waist. There had been some controversy, mostly generated by Ericsson and his lackeys, about Marla receiving the pistol, while many of the other colonists had to make do with axes and spears, but Marla found herself glad that Khan had remained adamant on this point; amid all these genetically enhanced
physical specimens, her gun served as a much-needed equalizer.

Just call me Annie Oakley,
she thought.

She turned her back on Zuleika, but could not resist glancing backward over her shoulder as she marched away from the other woman. Thankfully, Zuleika appeared content, for now, simply to shoot daggers at Marla with her eyes. “Go ahead, walk away,” she called out. “I’m not going anywhere—and neither is anybody else!”

Marla made a mental note to ask Khan what a “supermodel” was. Some sort of genetically engineered prototype?

The bulk of her Starfleet gear was stored in a half-finished shed not far from Khan and Marla’s own private hut. The basic wooden construction had been completed, but only the bottom third of the shack had been daubed with thermoconcrete, to provide a secure foundation. They were starting to run low on thermoconcrete, Marla knew; she wondered if there would be enough to finish the shed before the rains hit. If not, they might have to move the supplies back into one of the original cargo carriers.

Thunder rumbled again, and Marla caught a glimpse of lightning to the south.
That could be dangerous,
she fretted, worrying about the colonists still out in the fields. They’d already had to stamp out a few scary brushfires, although so far there had been no casualties.

As she wound through rows of huts, on her way to the storage shed, she spotted Paul Austin, one of Ericsson’s cronies, loitering nearby. A sunburnt American, with ruddy skin and tattoos, he was leaning against a typical hut, smoking a cigarette made from a local plant that bore some slight familial resemblance to Terran tobacco. Marla shook her head; of all the barbaric habits that Khan’s people had
brought with them from the twentieth century, smoking was one of the most baffling. Why inhale noxious fumes, when even the humans of their own era knew it was bad for them?

Intertwining snakes, spiders, and scorpions covered the tattooed American’s bare arms and chest. The revolting creature Daniel Katzel had just discovered would have fit right in.

Conscious of Marla’s scrutiny, Austin crushed his cigarette beneath his heel and strode away, perhaps concerned that Marla might report him to Khan for shirking. He needn’t have worried; Marla figured she was unpopular enough without becoming the camp snitch, which was one of the reasons she tried not to complain to Khan about the harsh treatment she got from Zuleika and the others.

It worried her, though, that Austin had been lurking so near Khan’s quarters—and the supply shed. What if he wasn’t just taking a smoking break?

Quickening her step, she arrived at the shed, where she was relieved to see Vishwa Patil, a security officer who had once been stationed at Khan’s fortress in northern India, standing guard over the precious supplies. Meticulous about his appearance, despite the rough conditions, he sported a trim military haircut along with an impressive handlebar mustache, whose oiled tips curved upward below his cheeks.

A padlock and chains provided additional security for the shed, of a sort; the chains could not stop Austin or any other colonist from breaking in, of course—Marla still remembered Khan snapping his manacles in half in front of poor Chekov—but a broken lock would alert her if someone had been at her carefully hoarded Starfleet gear.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted Patil. “I need to retrieve a new fuel cell.”

The stern-faced Indian nodded and stepped away from the door. Although clearly uninterested in small talk, the guard knew that Khan had granted Marla full access to the shed.
Thank heaven for small favors,
she thought; after Zuleika, she wasn’t up for another argument.

Marla unfastened the lock and pulled the door open. She stepped inside, leaving the door open to let in the daylight. More light filtered in through the cracks between the un-plastered saplings. After her exhausting hike in the sun, the relative shade of the thatch-covered hut came as a welcome change.

Her eyes adjusting to the shadows, she quickly inventoried the contents of the shed, which included spare medkits, life-support gear, hazard vests, tritanium-mesh blankets, snow gear, a universal translator, antigrav cargo pallets, electronic clipboards, transtator components, protein re-sequencers, plasma lights, generators, rechargers, and other Starfleet-issue equipment. No communicators, though; Captain Kirk hadn’t wanted to give Khan the capacity to lure unsuspecting starships into a trap.

To her chagrin, she found only two fully charged power cells left for the tricorder.
I’ll have to remember to recharge my old one,
she realized; a somewhat time-consuming procedure. Recycling and cannibalizing their existing equipment was a way of life on Ceti Alpha V.
After all, we can hardly requisition Starfleet for fresh supplies
.

It occurred to her that there were probably a few more cells stored in one of the old cargo bays that now served as watchtowers. Not wanting to place all their eggs in one basket, Khan had made sure that reserves of their most
essential supplies were safely tucked away inside the impregnable steel carriers.
I should probably check on those supplies as well,
she thought.

Without warning, the door slammed shut, leaving her in the dark. A heavy weight hit the ground outside. She heard footsteps and called out, “Patil?”

No answer.

Marla hurried to the door, only to find it locked from the outside. Thunder boomed overhead. She shoved on the door with both hands, but it refused to budge. Something large and massive was wedged against the other side. Marla was trapped. “Patil?” she yelled again, more anxiously this time. Had something happened to the guard? “Let me out of here!”

She smelled smoke. A sudden fear gripped her heart.

Oh no!

But it was already too late. The dry timbers surrounding her caught fire immediately, the flames quickly blocking every avenue of escape. Choking black smoke filled the shed, and Marla dropped to the floor in search of purer air, even as the acrid fumes invaded her nose and lungs.

For a second, she considered trying to dig her way out of the burning hut, but the thermoconcrete foundation rendered that scheme unworkable; there was no way she could tunnel deep enough to escape the hut before the flames consumed her. She could feel the heat of the roaring blaze all around her, scorching her skin.